Satellite television broadcasting is an interesting field to looik into, especially now that there are thousands of channels available on a multitude of satellites. Over the past two days I have been learning about the Nanox HDTV recording device.
What I like about using the Nanox receiver is the ability to see stream information, what format is being broadcast as well as resolution. What’s interesting is that some satellite channels are broadcasting at full HD quality whilst others are broadcasting at no more than 576*352 for example. You get the bit rate information too.
Now that I’ve lost most people here’s the part I like. You can attach any USB hard disk to the device and record programs off the television. This is particularly interesting if there’s a documentary you intended to watch but weren’t around to watch it. It can record two simultaneous streams at once.
TRP files are a compressed file format that are ideal for storage. They’re not recognised by quicktime but if you download mpeg streamclip then you can convert this file format to any file format you desire.
If you record a number of files with the satellite receiver with mpeg streamclip you can batch encode a number of files at once. This means that a spare computer can do the rendering without you having to be there.
If there is an EPG available for the channel you are watching you can schedule the receiver to record the program. In other situations you can start a recording and it will ask whether to stop recording at the end of the scheduled program. If there is no EPG the process is manual to start a recording but you can select how long you want to record for. It’s a shame that you need to go into the menu to set the record duration however.
I installed Asphalt 6 on the macbook air and the game is easily playable.
I like this game on the iphone 3GS and Iphone 4 and have spent many hours playing on both mobile devices. Now that it is finally available on laptop/netbooks like the Macbook Air there’s another platform on which to have fun on.
One of the nice features is the larger screens, the ease of control and the extra information you can absorb from such a large screen. Yes 11 inches is a small screen compared to a 27inch imac but do you sit at the coffee table in the lounge with your iMac?
There’s also the small matter of price. It’s only 7CHF. If you play 7hrs then it’s worth the money, without a doubt.
as a side thought you could go to the Geneva motorshow and play it whilst sitting in the real thing ;-).
John Cleese on Seesmic Tuesday 7th at 12am Pacific Time So it’s 21h00 in France, 8pm in the UK, 3pm East Coast. John Cleese will reply your questions.
See his biography here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000092/
Next week on Seesmic we can look forward to seeing John Cleese and asking him questions. If you don’t have an account yet familiarize yourself with the site. Looking forward to this moment 🙂
I had a morning walk this morning because I found that there are too many people to avoid during my afternoon walks. During my morning walk I took images of flowering plants, bees collecting pollen from flowers, roses budding and Apple orchards getting ready to blossom.
During the walk I also listened to two Echo Der Zeit episodes in a row. I like to listen during my walks because I’m taking the opportunity to get used to hearing German, and as I become more fluent, so I can understand a bigger proportion of the podcast.
In Switzerland the discussion about whether to close tourism sites continues although for me the answer is simple. During a pandemic you should entertain yourself as close to home as possible. Every one of my walks starts at home and reaches as far as I can walk in an hour. The trip back might bring it to two hours but I’m within a radius of five kilometres of my home and i am staying local.
The motorway is almost empty. At the same time of day in normal conditions both lanes would be filled and you would struggle to see decent gaps between cars. Now the gaps are large and it would be a pleasure to drive.
Normally this road is filled with traffic on a Sunday as people head to and from Nyon and it’s surroundings. Today we see large gaps in traffic as so few people are getting into their cars for activities. Traffic, at least on weekends has declined.
I followed the link because i was afraid that there was a new pandemic rule forbidding us from using vehicles on Sunday. Luckily it’s from a century ago.
Now that we’re entering week four of the pandemic it’s appropriate to mention this open letter. In the last three days I’ve seen two different neighbours have guests over three times. Tomorrow will be the fourth week from self-isolation where we have not been able to socialise in person and it does have a cost. We can’t shake hands, we can’t have a conversation from a normal speaking distance.
“Study after study demonstrates that even if there is only a little bit of connection between groups (i.e. social dinners, playdates/playgrounds, etc.), the epidemic trajectory isn’t much different than if there was no measure in place.”
Open Letter from Jonothan Smith, Epidemologist, yale University.
Apathetic and selfish people, who continue to socialise, and continue to see different people are making it so that those of us taking the pandemic will need to sacrifice for longer before the end of the pandemic. It does feel interminable. We chose to start self-isolating as individuals six weeks ago and now we’re in week four of forced self-isolation, and because people are not respecting the rules, it feels as if there is no end in sight for this pandemic.
In England those who like to spend time outdoors for walks, for runs and for bike rides are afraid that the selfishness of some will result in the removing of their last freedom. Enforced solitude and the ensuing loneliness is detrimental to people’s well being. Having the freedom to go for a walk, a bike ride or a run is beneficial because for half an hour to two hours we can spend time with our thoughts, but also distracted by the landscape in which we find ourselves.
The worst thing about losing the freedom to go for walks, runs or bike rides is that we lose the safety valve that enables us to cope with isolation. It also takes away our access to sunshine and daylight. If we’re stuck indoors without our daily walks we will see a deterioration in health. That in turn will lead to more preventable deaths.
A few months ago, before the winter months came I was happilly flying the drone up to four times a day. At the time I was running their old app and it worked flawlessly. You turned on the remote, turned on the drone and then you connected to the wifi hotpot and within 30 seconds you could be flying.
At some point in November the cheeky people designing the app decided to “simplify” everything with QR codes which is theoretically fantastic. In practice this locks you out from your own device. The remote and the drone work fine and I can fly the drone without a video display or telemetry and I can connect the phone to the wifi hotspot of the remote.
The problem occurs when I try to connect the DJI Go4 app with the remote. At this moment the app refuses to recognise the drone and I’m stuck. I’ve tried resetting the remote, resetting the drone. I’ve tried re-installing the app and I’ve tried Android and iOS devices without any communications between the app and the drone.
If I had had these issues during my previous 90 flights and with a previous version of the app I would assume responsibility. As things are I am not to blame, the app breakers are.
Remember that this is the prime season for someone to buy a new drone and I would be tempted by the air. How can I justify buying a new drone when the old one has a faulty app that other DJI drones use as well?
I would strongly advise people against buying a drone that relies on their dji go 4 app. It has a design flaw whereby you get locked out of your device.
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